


Selling Meteors To Dinosaurs

by moonix



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Bot sanctuary, Found Family, Gen, M/M, Mechanic Andrew Minyard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:19:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25133026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonix/pseuds/moonix
Summary: Neil pretends to be a robot in order to escape his father and the Moriyama Corp ship he's confined to. He did not count on getting sent to bot mechanic Andrew Minyard to be fixed.
Relationships: Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Comments: 53
Kudos: 629





	Selling Meteors To Dinosaurs

**Author's Note:**

> Just a heads-up: the bots in this fic are created and designed to serve and be used by humans for various purposes, such as soldiers, sex bots, servants, etc. The fic doesn't go into too much detail but it does suggest that at least some of them have or gain sentience at some point. So I just wanna warn for that here. Other than that it's the usual fare of tragic backstories, scars, self harm, a panic attack, but none of that is the main focus of the fic or very explicit. Neither Nathan nor the Moriyamas make an actual appearance.

”Bot! Freeze!“

_Fuck._

Neil sighed and stopped at the end of the corridor. Everything had been going smoothly up until now, but of course he had to mess up at the last moment. There were two guards, one in standard garb and one dressed in the dark red commander’s uniform. Her badge said _Leverett_ and both had their weapons pointed at him and were advancing slowly.

“Identify yourself!”

Right. Time for Plan B.

Well, technically Plan J by now, but who was counting. Freedom was just a hair’s breadth away, if only Neil could get past these two…

“Designation JOS10,” he said in his best monotone, standing meekly. “Sector 56399. I have a malfunction code QP711-XY39.”

He’d chosen the code more or less at random, but judging by the way both guards blanched, maybe he’d overdone it a little.

“Alright. Power down, JOS10,” Leverett said. The other guard’s weapon started to droop a little, but Leverett kept hers pointed straight at his forehead.

“Unknown query,” Neil said blandly. “Awaiting input.”

“Shit,” Leverett cursed, then gestured at the other guard. “Johnson, get the manual override.”

“Ma’am,” Johnson said, alarmed.

“Do I need to repeat myself,” Leverett ground out through her teeth.

“No, ma’am,” Johnson muttered, then shuffled warily around Neil until he was behind him. Neil resisted the temptation to elbow him in the gut and take his weapon—Leverett looked too competent not to shoot him the second he could get his hands on it.

“Um, ma’am?” Johnson piped up. “There’s, uh, no port.”

“It’s one of _those_ then,” Leverett muttered, frowning.

“One of those?” Johnson asked. “Ma’am?”

“A Servicer,” Leverett replied, her lip curling. “They don’t have visible ports. I wasn’t aware we even had any on board, but I guess it’s a rather… private matter. Very well, then. JOS10, identify the cabin you belong to.”

“None,” Neil said. “I was in storage as back-up.”

“Check the logs,” Leverett instructed Johnson.

“It’s not listed as official cargo,” Johnson said.

“Figures,” Leverett huffed. “Probably a senator’s, then. They always get edgy about the kinky shit they get up to behind closed doors.”

“Should we report it to-?” Johnson asked.

“No,” Leverett snapped. “Mr Moriyama has better things to do than look after a faulty sex toy.”

“Of course,” Johnson mumbled, sidling around to Neil’s front again. He looked him up and down for a moment, then brightened. “I could test it, ma’am? To see where the problem is?”

Leverett looked like she wanted to pinch her nose.

“And get your bits electrocuted off by buggy code, Johnson?” she sighed. “By all means, be my guest.”

“Oh,” Johnson stuttered, “oh, no, of course not, ma’am, you’re right, ma’am.”

Neil had to clamp down on the urge to roll his eyes. If Johnson had insisted on test-piloting him, he could have easily knocked him out and disarmed him. With Leverett there…

“Take it to a mechanic, then?” Johnson suggested hesitantly.

“Repairing these things is costly. No, we will dispose of it,” Leverett decided. “Smoothly and cleanly. Look up the nearest scrapyard.”

Johnson’s eyes went slightly unfocused as he pulled up a search on his ViewScreen.

“There’s a salvager on Palmetto,” he said after a moment. “We’re due to dock on Columbia Station soon, it shouldn’t take long to dump it there. Owner pays off the grid.”

“Off the grid, you say?” Leverett said. A slow smile spread across her face. “And the bot isn’t logged, how fortunate for us. I’d say well done, Johnson. Prepare a Crawler for our guest.”

-

There wasn’t so much a scrapyard _on_ Palmetto as Palmetto itself _was_ the scrapyard.

Neil exited the Crawler with Leverett’s gun wedged firmly between his shoulderblades. She hadn’t once let it drop or given him any opening to take it from her, so he figured his best bet was probably to wait until she was gone and take his chances with the scrapyard’s owner, a man called Wymack. A fatal accident in a scrapper on some remote, deadbeat moon would raise less suspicions than two missing Corp guards and a licensed Crawler with its incredibly visible logo, anyway.

The main building was painted a gaudy, dirty orange. The ground was hard packed earth, scraggly grass pushing out here and there, and the air was laced with the tang of metal and NutriOil. Neil placidly let himself be led inside, though he had to squash down the urge to flinch away from the large, scowling man who greeted them.

“I don’t take Corp tech,” he said dismissively the moment he laid eyes on the skintight black suit Neil had liberated from storage, the Corp’s logo clearly displayed on his chest.

“Mr Wymack,” Leverett said around the blade of a smile clamped between her lips, “I’m sure we can come to a mutually beneficial agreement here.”

“Is that a threat?” Wymack said, tossing his dirty rag down without looking where it landed. It hit the side of a workbench and slid to the floor, which was only marginally less dirty than the cloth.

“Consider it an opportunity,” Leverett said sweetly.

Neil subtly flexed his fingers by his sides. If Leverett and Wymack went into his office to negotiate, he could surprise Johnson, grab a few cans of paint to disguise the Crawler for now and trade it for something stealthier on the next moon, get as far away from the Corp as possible. And then…

“Are we in agreement, then?” Leverett said. Johnson had shown Wymack something on a handheld ViewScreen that Wymack didn’t look too happy about.

“Fine. Now get off my property,” Wymack grunted, gesturing at the door.

Leverett smiled again, made Johnson check if the payment had gone through, then backed away. Before they left, she turned around again and aimed her weapon at Neil’s knee.

All his instincts sang at him to run, to dodge, but it was too late. A starburst of pain lanced through his leg like shrapnel and he buckled, landing hard on the floor. The movement concealed his gasp, and he was blindly aware of Wymack shouting curses after Leverett for damaging his merchandise and Johnson laughing nervously about how lifelike they made the Servicers nowadays.

“Some people like to see them bleed,” Leverett’s voice echoed after her, and then the door fell shut behind them.

“Great,” Wymack sighed. “Just fucking great.”

He picked up a slightly cleaner rag and bent down to tie it around Neil’s knee. Neil swallowed a hiss and tried to keep his face neutral, but something must have shown in his expression regardless, because Wymack paused as he glanced at his face.

Neil nearly had a heart attack when the old man spoke up.

“I wasn’t lying, you know. I don’t take Corp cast-offs.”

“Unknown query,” Neil tried. “Awaiting input.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Wymack grumbled. His joints creaked as he got to his feet. “I’m too fucking old for this. Boyd!”

“Yes, sir!” someone called jauntily from the depths of the workshop.

“Get that rat bastard Minyard for me,” Wymack called back. “I got something for him.”

“Right on, sir!”

Neil’s brain itched to reach out and activate his ViewScreen to find out who Minyard was, but he’d ripped out the control panel before he’d left the Corp ship. It had been necessary so he wouldn’t be tracked, but it still left him feeling strangely naked.

Wymack left him on the floor and went back to his work station. He didn’t bother to point a weapon at him, but Neil’s leg still throbbed with pain and it took all of his concentration to breathe evenly and not make a sound.

He wasn’t sure how much time had passed when the door flew open and a short, dead-faced man in stained overalls marched in.

“You better have something good to interrupt my afternoon nap, old man, or I’m going to gut you with a screwdriver.”

“Minyard,” Wymack said drily. “Always a pleasure.”

He pointed at Neil, but Minyard’s eyes had already snagged on him. His gaze was razor sharp as he assessed his slumped pose, vacant expression and patched-up leg.

“What happened?”

“Corp guards showed up out of the blue and dropped it off,” Wymack said. “One of them was a little trigger happy.”

“Hm,” Minyard made.

“It’s a Servicer,” Wymack added.

Something in Minyard’s gaze shifted.

“I’ll take it,” he said. “You owe me the usual.”

Wymack rolled his eyes but didn’t argue. Minyard turned back to Neil.

“Designation?” he asked.

“JOS10,” Neil replied. “Sector 56399.”

“I don’t care which fucking sector,” Minyard scoffed. “Model?”

“1SASS45.”

“Gender?”

“Male,” Neil said. In all honesty he didn’t much care, but it seemed the safer option in case anyone decided to check his “equipment”—some of the non-gendered Servicers were able to change their appearance to suit their owner’s needs, which Neil could definitely not do.

“Malfunction code?”

“QP711-XY39,” Neil repeated.

“Which is just bullshit speak for nobody knows what’s wrong with you but it’s definitely Bad,” Minyard said. “Alright. Get up.”

Neil pushed himself up. His injured leg shook under his weight and he nearly crumpled again, but Minyard was at his side in a flash, propping him up.

“Andrew,” Wymack called after him.

Minyard paused, but didn’t turn around.

“Be careful,” Wymack said. “It’s still Corp tech.”

Minyard didn’t deign that with a response and led Neil outside to a smooth black Cruiser that seemed at odds with his dirty overalls and messy hair.

“If you get Nutri on my seats, I will shoot you into space,” Minyard growled, dumping him in the back.

Neil bit back a reply and let himself close his eyes for a moment, breathing out in slow, measured pulses against the pain.

-

“-ten. Josten. End standby.”

Neil opened his eyes.

He was lying on a metal bench, looking up at a vaulted ceiling. Dust motes spun through the air, tickled by sunlight. Someone bent over him; messy blond hair, brackish green eyes, a slightly crooked nose with a faint scar across the bridge. Freckles.

“Morning sunshine,” Minyard said sarcastically. “Exceptionally slow reaction time. Couple fried circuits, probably.”

A very old bot was wheeling around him, taking notes. It must have been one of the early Assistant models as it had barely any human features, and it looked like it had been patched up with different materials in several places.

“We’ll go through basic functions. Josten, lift your right arm.”

Neil obediently lifted his right arm, feeling a slew of pins and needles at the movement. He felt parched and sore and wondered how long he’d been asleep, but the even keel of the light didn’t allow for a proper estimate of the time of day, not to mention the fact that he had no idea where he even was.

“Lift your left arm,” Minyard said. “Head. Left index finger. Right thumb. Right foot.”

At that, pain shot out from his knee again and Neil had to fight to keep his face blank. Minyard reached out to untie the rag and something zipped up Neil’s spine like a piranha, devouring his common sense.

“No.”

Minyard stilled. One of his eyebrows twitched faintly upwards like he was surprised.

“No?” he repeated.

Neil bit his tongue hard and let his eyes glaze over. Maybe he should spew some nonsense, play up on the fried circuits… But Minyard was an engineer. If Neil didn’t put on a convincing show, he’d see right through him.

“Alright,” Minyard said before Neil had made up his mind, dropping his hands. “Kevin!”

A figure detached from the wall and walked forward. He’d been standing so still Neil hadn’t recognised him as a person, and at closer look, he had to redact that impression as well—he was a Perfect Soldier. His serial number was tattooed on his cheek, though it was too small for Neil to make out the individual digits, and one of his hands was exposed to show the metal underneath.

“Show your new friend to his suite,” Minyard said. “Take 1A.”

To Neil’s astonishment, Kevin did something that Soldiers were not usually programmed to do: he scowled.

“Why me?” he grumbled. Grumbling, too, was not a thing Soldiers should have been able to do. “Call Nicky, or Renee.”

“Nicky cannot be trusted around Servicers,” Minyard said. “And Renee is visiting Jean.”

“Fine,” Kevin said, snapping his fingers at Neil. “Follow me.”

Standing up was agonising. Neil shuffled after Kevin, feeling Minyard’s eyes on his back the whole time. They went through a cavernous workshop that seemed to have once been an old warehouse with large, floor-to-ceiling windows, the sawdust on the floor muffling their steps. One half of the space was devoted to individual workbenches and various robot parts haphazardly strewn about, the other contained several smaller ships in different states of disrepair, some strung from the ceiling beams, others lying belly-up and disembowelled on the ground like meteors that had fallen from the sky. Neil took note of the ones that looked like they could still fly and followed Kevin through a side door into a cooler corridor.

“This is yours,” Kevin said, unlocking a door and pushing it open. Neil expected one of the coffin-like cabins that bots were kept in when they weren’t needed or had to perform maintenance, but beyond the door was a small, sparsely furnished bedroom.

“There’s a couple of different ports by the bed, NutriOil and a First Fix kit in the cupboard. You can stay here until your leg is finished reconstructing. If you need any skin grafts, ask Andrew.”

“Isn’t he going to fix the malfunction?” Neil couldn’t help asking.

Kevin shrugged.

“Is it bothering you?”

“The only thing that bothers me is that you don’t act like a Soldier.”

Kevin’s face twitched.

“I’m not a Soldier,” he said, drawing himself up. “Not anymore. And you don’t have to be a Servicer anymore. Andrew is the best bot mechanic there is, he can help you be whatever you want to be.”

“If he’s the best mechanic, why is he living at the ass end of the universe?” Neil blurted out. “I’ve never encountered his name or logo anywhere. All the tech here looks about ten years out of date, minimum.”

Kevin tilted his head and traced the exposed metal of his left hand with his right.

“Because he doesn’t work for the Corp,” he said simply, then turned around and left Neil on the doorstep of Suite 1A, the key still in the lock like Neil could be trusted with it.

Like he wasn’t just property, to be locked away when he wasn’t needed.

Neil pulled the key out and weighed it in his hand. It was old-fashioned, not even electronic. He stepped into the room, closed the door and turned the key in the lock, then tried the handle. The door didn’t budge. He unlocked and locked it again a few times before finally sinking down on the bed, disturbing a small cloud of dust that had been snoozing on top of the sheets.

The cupboard held a few packs of Nutri and a First Fix kit like Kevin had promised. Neil riffled through it and unwrapped the filthy rag around his knee, inspecting the wound. There was a small bottle of alcohol-based cleaning fluid in the kit which would just have to do for disinfecting, though it stung like hell when Neil daubed it on the wound with shaking hands. He really had to find some drinkable water soon; the blood loss had left him unpleasantly woozy.

He pulled some old clothes out of a drawer and peeled off the black jumpsuit since the blast had left a sizeable hole in it and he didn’t want to leave the wound exposed. One shirt he tore up into strips and used as a bandage, then he slipped into a pair of cotton pants and a loose, long-sleeved sweatshirt that would easily hide his scars. Getting dressed hurt his leg again, so he sat back down on the bed to catch his breath and close his eyes until the room stopped spinning.

Maybe he’d camp out here for a bit. He didn’t really understand why Minyard hadn’t attempted to check his alleged malfunction or power him off, or what the deal with Kevin was, but he’d have to wait at least until Minyard went to bed before he could steal one of the ships and make his escape.

Until then, he might as well take a nap.

-

When Neil woke up again, the room was dark.

His mouth was dry and sticky like Velcro, and he coughed against the dust that had settled in the back of his throat. The pain in his knee had dulled somewhat, and he experimentally leaned his weight on his right leg, satisfied when it didn’t buckle.

The warehouse was silent as Neil crept along the corridor and into the main workshop. There were a few more suites where he presumed Minyard and Kevin slept, as well as a bathroom and a kitchen tucked in the back. Neil greedily drank down water from the bathroom sink, then peed and washed himself as quietly as possible before exploring the kitchen.

Most of the food in the cupboards consisted of sweets, though there was also coffee, almond milk, bread and eggs. Neil pinched a few things here and there that would hopefully go unnoticed, stuffed them in his pockets and crammed a chocolate protein bar in his mouth to appease his low blood sugar. Then he went back into the workshop and had a closer look at the ships, though he was disappointed to realise that none of them were in any state to fly.

The doors were all locked. Night pressed on the windows, too dark to yield any clues as to his surroundings. Neil had the vague impression that the workshop was closed in on all sides by a vast, empty desert, but without his ViewScreen he couldn’t rely on his eyesight to play fair.

He could probably find some tools suited to lock-picking if he-

“Cigarette?” someone said behind him and Neil startled, whirling around. Minyard stood leaning against the far wall, clad in a tank top, sweat jacket and boxer shorts, slowly twirling a packet of cigarettes in his fingers. His hair was even messier than before.

“Only humans smoke,” he replied. Unless there were Servicers out there who were programmed to do it for the aesthetic, which now that Neil thought about it was definitely a possibility.

Minyard looked at him weirdly.

“If you say so.”

He tossed something at Neil that glittered in the darkness. Neil caught it reflexively and felt his fingers close around the jagged teeth of a key.

“Why are you giving me this?”

“To unlock the door,” Minyard said, nodding at the door behind Neil. “I am going to smoke. You can continue to stare vacantly out the window or join me. I don’t care.”

The night air smelled sweet and dry as Neil stepped outside with Minyard. Neil had been right about the desert, but it wasn’t vast or empty. He could see the deeper indigo shadows of mountains in the distance, the faint, pinprick lights of a town to the east, and stars smeared along the sky above like spilled glitter. Crickets populated the silence and the air was warm against his skin.

A blue-tinged flame flickered to life, briefly illuminating Minyard’s face as he lit his cigarette. He inhaled deeply and blew the smoke out slowly and steadily, leaning against the wall of the warehouse behind him.

Something like a long-dead craving turned in its grave deep within Neil’s chest and he held out his hand.

“Only humans smoke,” Minyard parroted back at him. He gazed at Neil out of the corner of his eyes, then passed over his cigarette without further comment. He lit another one for himself and Neil tentatively inhaled, clamping down on a choked sound when the smoke tickled the sore back of his throat, though he didn’t quite manage to stall it entirely.

Minyard’s eyes slid over to him again, mustering him.

“Gag reflex?” he asked flatly. “How unusual, for a Servicer.”

“Just not used to it,” Neil lied. “Why don’t you work for the Corp?”

“Because I like telling them no,” Minyard said, exhaling smoke in Neil’s direction. It sounded like a personal joke, but Neil wouldn’t get to the bottom of it even if he pressed.

“What did you do to Kevin?” he asked instead.

Minyard huffed out a bitter, smoke-tinged laugh.

“Me? Nothing,” he said. “I replaced his hand.”

“Am I supposed to believe that? He’s a Perfect Soldier, isn’t he? They don’t just…”

He waved his hand.

“Go rogue?” Minyard asked. “Like you?”

Neil was quiet. Maybe it was better if Minyard thought that. Maybe Minyard had a soft spot for rogue tech, maybe he thought a bot going against its programming was like a fun pet, or a project he could tinker with like all those broken, useless husks of old ships inside the workshop.

Minyard rolled around to face him, still propped against the wall.

“I will solve you,” he hummed, tapping his thumb against his lips, cigarette burning a glowing hole into the night. Neil had forgotten his own; it had almost burned down to the filter in his limp hand. He stubbed it out on the wall along with the waning craving and tossed the stub into the grass.

“I am not a math equation.”

“Everything can be boiled down to a math equation,” Minyard replied. “It’s just a matter of complexity.”

“Mechanic, mathematician, philosopher,” Neil said. “Next you’ll tell me you can tap dance, too.”

Minyard flicked his lighter. The flame shivered over his face, leaving bright spots flitting across Neil’s vision before plunging them back into darkness.

“No, but I crochet occasionally,” Minyard said, amusement swirling in his voice like flakes of ash. Neil couldn’t tell if he was joking.

He was probably joking.

“A man full of surprises.”

The silence took on an odd tinge for a moment. Minyard tapped his fingers against the wall, then pushed off.

“Lock the door when you go back inside,” he said flatly before disappearing back into the workshop.

Neil breathed in the lingering smoke and slid down the wall until he was sitting on the ground. He looked up at the hard, glimmering bedrock of the night sky, brushed his hands through the gritty grass around him and dug his fingers into the loose earth, tightening them into fists.

He’d gotten away.

The full force of the realisation was like the shockwave of a faraway detonation, momentarily deafening him with its blast. He curled into a ball, wheezing and shaking, and clenched his hands over his ears.

He was free. He was free.

_He was finally free._

-

Neil woke up late the next morning. He sipped some water from the bottle he’d filled in the kitchen last night, ate a few cookies and chewed half a tooth tab he’d sneaked from the bathroom before venturing outside.

The workshop was bathed in soft golden light. Music was playing somewhere, too low to make out the lyrics or exact genre, and the smell of coffee lingered in the air.

He found Minyard underneath one of the suspended ships, up to his elbows in wires. Kevin had taken the old Assistant robot outside and was trying to teach it to fetch the sticks he threw, with mixed success. A third person—bot?—was singing in the kitchen and producing a lot of unnecessary noise.

Probably human, then.

“Pass me that panel,” Minyard grunted, flicking his fingers at him.

“I thought you had Assistants for that,” Neil said.

Minyard sighed in irritation.

“I have one competent assistant, who is currently playing fetch with my other assistant,” he said.

Neil stuck his hands in his pockets and leaned backwards to peer out of the open door.

“Is Kevin the competent one or the other?”

“Guess,” Minyard said. “Now pass me that panel.”

Neil nudged it towards him with his foot, leaving it just close enough that Minyard could reach it if he stretched.

“Andrew! Breakfast!” the singing voice called from the kitchen.

“Who’s that?” Neil asked.

“Nicky,” Minyard said.

“Bot?”

“Hmm.”

“What sort?”

“A nuisance,” Minyard muttered, wedging the panel in place and hitting it with a wrench until it closed.

“Ha ha,” Neil said. “How many bots do you own?”

“None,” Minyard said and heaved himself out from under the ship. “They own themselves.”

“Any humans?”

“I don't own anyone. They're all here of their own free will, fuck knows why."

“Andrew!” Nicky shouted again, sticking his head out of the kitchen. “Your eggs are getting cold—oh, hello. You must be the newbie.”

“Josten, Nicky,” Minyard introduced them. “Nicky, no.”

Nicky pouted.

“Aw, Andrew. I didn’t even do anything.”

“Yet.”

“Not my fault he’s so pretty,” Nicky sniffed.

“He’s a Servicer, they’re made that way,” Minyard reminded him, making shooing motions until Nicky stepped aside to let him into the kitchen. Neil lingered out of range, mouth watering and stomach growling at the smell of fried food and fresh coffee. He had to be more careful. He didn’t know if he could trust Minyard and his odd assortment of bots to keep their mouths shut if his father’s men came asking. It was lucky Leverett and Johnson hadn’t recognised him—a senator’s son, much less one as notorious as Nathan Wesninski, couldn’t hope to go unnoticed in higher circles, though Neil had taken great pains to dye his hair and eyes.

“Coffee?” Nicky asked kindly. “You’ve probably never had any, have you? You poor thing. Here, it’s amazing, I promise.”

“Don’t waste it on him. That model doesn’t have taste buds,” Minyard said shrewdly, stepping past him again with a plate of eggs and toast and a mug of coffee.

“Doesn’t mean he can’t still enjoy it,” Nicky muttered. “Don’t be such a killjoy, Andrew. Besides, you could build him taste buds. You did it for Allison.”

“I don’t need taste buds,” Neil said hastily. “But I’ve had coffee before.”

He took the mug Nicky was still holding and sipped at it. It was too sweet and too hot, but it still tasted better than anything he’d had in weeks.

When he looked up, Nicky was watching him with soft eyes. He looked and acted so human that Neil wondered if he actually was.

“It gets better, you know,” Nicky said. “Once you get out. There’s a lot you have to learn and adapt to, but it gets better. We’ve all been there.”

Neil didn’t know what to say to that and took another gulp of his coffee. Someone called for Nicky outside the front door and he went, tunelessly humming to himself and greeting the newcomers like old friends, leaning up on his tip-toes to kiss a tall blond man on the lips. The woman with him was small, soft and sweet-looking despite her dark, fathomless eyes. Her hair was dipped in a rainbow of pastel dyes and she watched Nicky and the other man with a neat smile on her heart-shaped lips.

“Erik and Renee,” Minyard said, on his way past to dump his empty plate into the sink.

“A Solace?” Neil guessed, catching Renee’s shrewd gaze.

“Was,” Minyard said.

“And Erik?”

“Human.”

“So is Nicky like his Servicer?”

Minyard froze briefly, then grabbed Neil’s empty mug and placed it in the sink as well.

“No,” he said. “They’re married.”

“Married? A bot and a human?” Neil laughed. Minyard’s face was stony, though, and Neil had a feeling he had to drop the topic or risk being thrown out.

Neil, being Neil, couldn’t resist digging his claws in.

“So, what is this? Some kind of bot rehab station, where you play happy family and teach them how to act like humans? Some people go for that, I guess.”

Minyard had him pressed up against the wall by the collar in a flash.

“You don’t know anything,” he growled quietly.

“Then explain it to me,” Neil murmured back.

Minyard let go as abruptly as he’d grabbed him. Neil expected him to say something, but all he did was walk away to greet Renee, who’d been watching them with placid curiosity. Neil smoothed down the wrinkles in his shirt and decided to join Kevin outside until there were less eyes that could potentially recognise or remember him later.

-

The days passed slowly, quietly.

Somehow Neil couldn’t scrounge up the energy to go through with any of the elaborate escape plans he concocted in his head.

Instead he hung around the workshop, sometimes helping, more often getting in the way of things. He accompanied Kevin on his walks with the Assistant bot, which Kevin called Lucky and Minyard called Dumbass. It took several offers from Neil to scrap the useless thing until he figured out that Minyard loved Dumbass as if it was a real dog, not a haphazard and unfortunate assembly of spare parts.

Nicky, meanwhile, was on a mission to introduce Neil to “the post Corp life”. He made him watch old movies with him, cooked him meals and even attempted to teach him how to ride a bicycle. It turned out that in some aspects Neil’s sheltered life as a senator’s son had been remarkably similar to that of a bot in service to the Corp, so it wasn’t too difficult to feign novelty, though the spice levels in Nicky’s cooking were starting to become a problem.

Occasionally, other people and bots stopped by the workshop with a job for Minyard or simply a social call.

There was Erik the human, who came to pick Nicky up from work every day. Renee sometimes stayed in one of the spare suites and she and Minyard disappeared for hours at a time to do something that usually left Minyard with bruises and a shine to his eyes that Neil chose to interpret as contentment, even though his face remained impassive as ever.

Neil figured it was either some weird sort of sex or some weird sort of fight club, though he couldn’t figure out which.

He also met Allison, another rogue bot who had fled the Reynolds household after being pampered and primped like their real daughter for years. Neil didn’t really understand her and shied away from her towering stature—she was almost seven feet tall in her heels, and even her hair was longer than Neil’s entire arm.

Matt Boyd, who worked at Wymack’s, dropped in every once in a while and had somehow decided to like Neil despite the fact that Neil barely uttered anything other than sarcastic quips and sullen silences. His girlfriend Dan Wilds and Wymack’s other employee, an ex-Foot Soldier bot called Seth, accompanied him sometimes. Seth, despite being a bot himself, didn’t have a high opinion of Servicers and thus treated Neil like a particularly stubborn piece of chewing gum stuck to the sole of his shoe. Neil rather enjoyed their verbal sparring matches and took every opportunity to egg him on.

When Minyard’s twin brother showed up for the first time, Neil finally relented and started calling him Andrew. It was more for convenience than anything else, though it felt like some invisible barrier that they’d slowly been dismantling had suddenly crumbled overnight.

They still shared cigarettes every now and then. Andrew picked at him like he was an itchy scab and Neil gave him half-truths and deflections, picking at him in turn. His leg had almost completely healed and Andrew had let him take out one of the ships for a test run, but something still kept Neil in place, even knowing that it was only a matter of time until his father traced him here.

“Have you ever heard of Fosters?” Andrew asked him one night when they were smoking outside. The wind carried over the distant noise of traffic and the air smelled like rain, though the clouds were still tight-lipped and broody. Neil had grabbed two chairs from the workshop and was sipping at a cup of coffee, one foot braced on the edge of his chair.

“Child bots?” he asked, tapping ash off his cigarette.

“Kind of,” Andrew said, tracing his mouth with his thumb. His eyes looked almost translucent in the dim red glow of his cigarette. “Fosters were bots that were created to be as human as possible, modelled after the genes of human ‘parents’ who couldn’t have or didn’t want children of their own. They were able to age and grow up, cry and laugh, feel pain and horror and disgust, even pleasure and, some say, love.”

“Were?” Neil asked.

“There were a few trial runs, but in the end they were all scrapped,” Andrew said tonelessly. “Too lifelike, too eerie, too high-maintenance. And worst of all, they all went rogue.”

Neil finished his cigarette in silence, tapping his foot against the leg of his chair. Lightning flicked in the distance like an angry cat’s tail, though they couldn’t hear the thunder yet.

“Are there any left?” Neil asked.

Andrew was quiet for a long time before he said: “Bits and pieces.”

Then he got up, ground out his cigarette and went inside.

-

Wymack came by the workshop the next day with a pile of junk for Andrew and a stack of old books for Kevin, who went through his weekly reading material like Nicky went through the chilli peppers Andrew grew by the south window.

“Josten,” he called, snapping his fingers at Neil and beckoning him over. Andrew trailed after him as Neil went and stopped just outside of Wymack’s reach.

“Yes?” he asked blankly.

Wymack looked at him, his arms crossed in front of his chest, and then sighed.

“Any reason why a bunch of Corp uppers showed up at my workshop this morning to ask about a missing senator’s son who happens to look kinda like you?”

“Nope,” Neil said, though his fingers and toes felt abruptly numb. “Must be some weird coincidence.”

“Right,” Wymack said dubiously. “Well, just in case it wasn’t, I told them I’d scrapped you and gave them some parts. Not sure if they believed me, but…”

He shrugged and pushed off the wall. Neil took an automatic step backwards and walked right into Andrew’s chest.

For a second, he wanted to stay there, lean against the steady protection of Andrew’s bulk and forget about everything else. Then one of Andrew’s hands came up to grip the back of his neck and he realised that he was shaking.

“Let me know if you need any more of those panels, Minyard,” Wymack said by way of goodbye. Neil watched him leave through the cloudy film on his retinas and tried to will his legs to move, but he was rooted to the spot, held in place by Andrew’s hand.

“Is your father going to be a problem?” Andrew murmured, close to his ear.

Neil jerked. Something cold trickled down his spine, as if Andrew had cracked an egg open on his skull.

“I don’t have a father.” He choked out a strangled laugh. “Bots are made, not born. You know that.”

“But you are not a bot,” Andrew murmured, still with the calm, slow honey drip of his voice.

“Of course I am,” Neil said.

“Did you honestly think I wouldn’t notice?” Andrew replied casually. “You bled real blood all over my workbench the very first day you came here, Nathaniel.”

“Neil,” Neil wheezed. “It’s Neil.”

“Are you going to tell on us, Neil?” Andrew asked calmly. “When you go back to daddy dearest and your rich, pampered life as a bona fide human? When you’re done with your little forage into the life of the lowly masses? The damaged and the unwanted?”

“Please,” Neil whispered. “Don’t make me go back.”

“Why not?” Andrew said. “Tell me one good reason. You look down on us, do you not? You think we aren’t human enough. Real enough. That we deserve what the Corp is doing to us.”

“No,” Neil said, “no, I don’t, Andrew, you have to believe me. My father…”

“Yes?” Andrew prompted, hand tightening on the back of Neil’s neck. “I’m listening.”

“I can show you,” Neil said, swallowing around a dry clump of earth in his throat.

“Then show me,” Andrew said.

“Can we go to my room?”

“No. You can show me right here or not at all.”

Neil swallowed again, then reached out behind him and fumbled for Andrew’s hand. Once he had it, he lifted it up and pushed it underneath his shirt, letting him feel the ridges of his scars.

The first brush of Andrew’s fingers made him shiver violently. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to relax as Andrew traced the different lines and patches of ruined skin under his shirt.

Finally, Andrew’s hand came to rest over Neil’s heart, which was beating like a live thing, wild and free.

“Okay,” he said.

Neil held his breath.

“Okay?”

“You can stay.”

Neil breathed out, slow and steady like cigarette smoke. His fingers prickled as the blood started flowing to his extremities again, and when Andrew removed his hand, his skin felt weirdly cold.

-

That night, they went for a walk. Andrew brought a torch, lighting the way as they went into the desert, wind tugging at their hair, the distant cries of birds overhead.

They walked in silence for what felt like an hour. Finally, Andrew turned off the path and led Neil around an outcrop of rock, into the mouth of a cave. After a few feet he stopped and shone his torch up, illuminating a large, gleaming Racer, one of the fastest, most expensive spaceships on the market.

“Wow,” Neil said, reaching out a hand to the underside of its left wing. “Where’d you get this?”

“Want a ride?” Andrew asked instead of answering his question.

“Hell yes.”

They climbed in, and Neil watched as the control panel lit up under Andrew’s hands. Racers were notoriously difficult to steer, but Andrew seemed to have a lot of practice, as he navigated them out of the cave and into the air with ease.

They glided almost noiselessly over the desert, the Racer accelerating steadily as Andrew coaxed it on. Neil’s stomach shivered at the sensation of hurtling through empty space and he took a deep breath, trying to gather enough words for his next question.

“You said ‘us’. Earlier. You said I look down on you,” he said, eyes fixed on the stars.

Andrew let the Racer slow down and put it in cruise control.

“I did,” he said.

“Are you,” Neil said, then licked his dry lips. “Are you a bot?”

“I was a Foster,” Andrew replied, looking at Neil like he had finally asked the right question. Stars were reflected in his eyes and Neil suddenly wanted to reach out and touch him, make sure he was real.

“And Aaron?”

“The improved model,” Andrew said. “Not that it made any difference in the end.”

“Bits and pieces,” Neil said, recalling something else Andrew had told him.

Andrew pulled back his sleeves to show a crosshatch of scars on his arms, like someone had hacked away at them with a machete.

“I learned about bot mechanics on myself,” he said and shrugged, rolling the sleeves back down. “Trial and error. But by that time there was not much left of me in the first place.”

Neil swallowed.

“You’re amazing, you know that?” he whispered.

“Shut up,” Andrew told him, and steered the Racer back down to the ground.

-

“How about a moustache,” Nicky suggested. “When Erik shaved his beard off, I didn’t recognise him at first. Facial hair can make a huge difference!”

“I am not growing a moustache,” Neil said, crossing his arms. “I still say we go with faking my death.”

“And risk them finding out you’re alive?” Dan said dubiously. “I don’t know, Neil…”

“He can lay low with the Trojans,” Kevin replied. “Jean’s been doing well there.”

Neil shook his head. Kevin had told him about the Trojans, a rogue bot commune on an abandoned moon, but he wasn’t a rogue bot. And besides, the whole point of this discussion was that he wasn’t going anywhere.

“I’m staying with Andrew.”

“Kill the senator,” Andrew piped up. When everyone looked at him, he shrugged. “Eliminating the prime threat is the most efficient way to deal with a problem.”

“Whatever we do, I think we can all agree that the main objective should be to protect Neil,” Renee said. Her voice was quiet and soft, but she had a way of making everyone listen to her that Neil still wasn’t sure if it came from being a Solace or if it was just inherently Renee.

“The _main_ _fucking objective_ is revolution,” Seth groused. “Dismantling the Corp and freedom for the bots. Who cares about some rich, jumped-up politician? Kill them all. We are at war.”

“Alright,” Dan sighed, getting up. “I think we should take a break and then go over our options again. Who wants pizza?”

The group broke up into smaller sections, some crowding into the kitchen for snacks and drinks, others talking amongst themselves. Andrew pulled out a packet of cigarettes, shaking it at Neil in question and then herding him outside.

The door cut off the others’ voices and the noises of the desert settled around them like dust motes. Neil took a lit cigarette from Andrew and looked at the lavender sky, breathing in the smoke mixed with the warm scents of sun-baked grass and earth.

“Can I really stay?” Neil asked, still marvelling at the prospect.

Andrew shrugged.

“I need a test pilot.”

“Oh yeah?” Neil teased. “That all you need?”

Andrew shot him an unimpressed look. They’d kissed for the first time last night, unhurried yet desperate, clinging to each other under the star-speckled night sky. Neil’s mouth still felt the phantom ghost of Andrew’s lips against his like taking a sip of fizzy water.

“Hey,” Neil said, lacing their hands together. “Thank you. For this.”

He waved his free hand around them and Andrew caught it in his other, pulling him in for a smoke-laced kiss.

“Stay,” he murmured.

“Is that an order?” Neil grinned.

“Yes.”

“Well, in that case. What choice do I have?”

Andrew shook his head.

“Every choice,” he said.

“Alright,” Neil smiled. “Then I’m _choosing_ to stay.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If you liked it please consider leaving kudos and/or a comment, it would make my day.


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